Bahrain: 'detainees tortured daily', study says

Country has the highest percentage of inmates across Mideast

(ANSAmed) - ROME, JUNE 11 - The ordeal of prisoners in
Bahrain, the country with the highest percentage of detainees
across the entire Middle East, often starts with a police raid
in a home or a checkpoint operation which turns into a real
abduction, a report published on Wednesday said. The person
taken away simply disappears - sometimes for 24 hours or for
months, according to the study published by the Bahrain Center
for Human Rights (BCHR). Those arrested reportedly find
themselves ''locked inside a nightmare''.

In the three years since the beginning of the protest
movement in favour of democracy which started in February 2011,
the report said, Bahrain's prison population has increased
exponentially. BCHR reportedly documented thousands of arbitrary
detentions, most of which followed forced disappearances, and a
long list of human rights violations, including torture.

The list of physical and psychological abuses is long and
includes brutal beatings, electrical shock, isolation, sleep
deprivation, cold air and exposure to sunlight, sexual
harassment, fake drownings, humiliation and no medical
treatments. ''Authorities seek the censorship of news by all
possible means'', the report also noted, explaining, for
example, that lawyers denouncing signs of torture on the bodies
of their clients are arrested.

However, testimony provided by hundreds of former inmates and
the families of dead prisoners trace a dramatic and inhumane
profile of what is going on inside Bahrain's prisons.

There are four detention centres: the worse, according to
those interviewed, is the Central investigative direction (CID).

The Isa Town Women Prison has for the most part a population
of female detainees who are foreign workers and don't speak
Arabic nor English and in many cases ignore the reason why they
are being detained.

In general, women represent 18.5% of the total prison
population.

But the saddest chapter, according to the report jointly
drafted by BCHR and the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights,
is the fate of detained minors. Bahrain's authorities are
reportedly keeping minors in unhealthy conditions together with
adults, the study said.

Since January, 70 cases of detained children aged 11 or older
have been documented. Some of them have been jailed on terrorism
charges, the report said. (ANSAmed)